


Challenge

by Reading Redhead (readingredhead)



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-22
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:50:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/pseuds/Reading%20Redhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t have to be thinking about her directly for his brain to be pondering the large and nebulous question that is Captain Holly Short.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Challenge

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally part of the first chapter of Crossroads, but didn't make the cut. However, I feel it stands on its own perfectly well.

At first the very idea is taboo. Artemis doesn’t let himself think it, or if he does it’s all biological—he cannot let his heart be more than a muscle—and no matter how he manipulates the variables there isn’t even the slightest chance of a positive outcome.

At first, it’s easy not to think about it. After all, with a mind like his there’s always something else going on, and he’s trained himself well enough that it takes only a moment to bring a new problem, a new scheme to the forefront. She is still there, simmering on a backburner, but he does not have to give her his whole attention.

This seems like a good idea until he realizes that her continual presence in the background is perhaps just as destructive as her occasional presence in the foreground. He doesn’t have to be thinking about her directly for his brain to be pondering the large and nebulous question that is Captain Holly Short.

Artemis doesn’t remember when he stopped seeing the picture of the two of them as an impossibility and started seeing it instead as just the challenge he’s been waiting for. He just knows that nothing good has yet to come of it.


End file.
